Reflections from a Summer Spent Running

I’ve shared once or twice on my Instagram that I’ve gotten back to running this summer, and it’s been simultaneously fine and miserable. Now that I’ve reached the end of my training plan, I thought it’d be appropriate to figure out what those thirteen weeks have contributed to my creative life.

At the beginning of the year, I did some research and dedicated a blog post to discussing the benefits of aerobic exercise on the creative mind, and I also put “Run a 10k” on my 2026 Bingo card. Neither of those things happened because I enjoy running. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say that anyone who claims to “like” running may be a touch crazy—and they’ll probably own up to that!

This isn’t my first time dipping into the world of running, and, thus far, none of my forays have made me enjoy this activity. When I ran on the Cross Country team in high school, my involvement was more about the socialization factor and having something to do with friends. I was JV for life and more than okay with that. Then, as a young adult out of college, I told myself I needed to do something for my health because there’s some heart concerns on one side of my family, and I either start caring about it while I can or pay for it later, you know?

While there are many options for exercise out there, running has always been mostly accessible. You gotta cough up some money right away for good shoes so you don’t hurt yourself with improper footwear, but, other than that, you don’t need special equipment or a gym membership. You just get out and go.

I am fortunate to live within five minutes of two different bike trails. Do you know what’s great about a bike trail, especially one that’s been made from an old railroad line? It’s flat! Well, flat for the most part. There is one section of trail near me that’s got a bit of an incline, but it hasn’t kicked my butt too badly.

From all the time I’ve spent at the trail this summer, the biggest takeaway has to do with what I’ve already mentioned: enjoyment. Which is to say that my enjoyment isn’t the point.

The activities I enjoy the most in this life are writing and reading, and those are primarily done sitting (unless I throw on an audiobook and tackle some tidying or another chore). But the human body was not designed to sit for hours crunched up on the couch or behind a computer screen typing away. Everyone knows this. A primarily sedentary life has been proven to be severely detrimental to your health; I even read somewhere that it can be worse than being a habitual smoker.

Starting out, getting yourself into the running routine and moving your body regularly, is going to be one of the—if not the most—difficult pieces of this puzzle. Because your first run may not be so bad because you’re finally getting out and doing the thing and then, whew, you did it! The second day still might not suck, but there’s odds that by the end of the first week you’re asking yourself, “Why am I out here doing this?”

This experience isn’t unique to running, and it can even be how establishing a writing routine feels. You’re excited to finally sit down and get words out. Maybe the first few days you’re full of ideas and direction on where you’re taking the session, which scenes you’re writing or what’s going to happen in Chapter 1. Then, from there, people lose steam, if they let themselves.

You can absolutely talk yourself into quitting when you’ve hardly begun. Discouragement—that you’ve hit a wall this quickly or that you’re having a miserable time—and negative self-talk usually deserve some credit for our mindset, at this stage of the game. I mean, have you ever seen the statistic of how many people start writing a book and then never finish it? It’s something like only 3% of adults who set out to begin and complete a manuscript rough draft actually do. 

And it’s not like this 3% has magically tapped into a novel writing process that is entirely fun and never a bad day ever. Writing cannot help but be a series of ebbs and flows. A string of brilliant days followed by a handful where you could confuse your brain with hot garbage. Why is that? Because writing is a human art, and anything humans are involved with is going to be imperfect.

Hopefully, we can have more days where we enjoy the process while we’re actively writing, but some days we have to be content in waiting for the joy. In being pleased simply for adding a hundred words to your draft. In, sure, taking a month to write one chapter but, yes, finally finishing it. Rejoice over the twenty minutes you were able to carve out in your day to sit with your project. Quiet contentment over knowing you are doing and haven’t given up is often part of the foundation for how you keep going.

This philosophy applies to my writing life and my running life. I followed a 10k training plan that someone else made (found free on the internet, by the way! Bonus!), and every week I’d start out looking at what mileage awaited me. The further into the plan the mileage increased, of course, and I’d stare down those weeks with a kind of dread. Then I’d finish the week and look back with great relief and a sense of pride. Because it might have wiped me out, but I’d done it. 

You know, as much as I haven’t enjoyed this running, I think it’s important to note this: I haven’t regretted it. There’s not been a single week where I looked back at what I accomplished and thought, Man, I wish I hadn’t done that. I wish I hadn’t pushed myself, even when I felt meh.

The same can be said about writing. In fact, the regret only comes when I don’t sit down and get some words out. I have a daily word goal that I strive for and am at least a wee disappointed in myself if I don’t hit it, but, even when I don’t get it yet still have some proof of progress, that’s better than nothing. There’s usually a spirit of gratitude that accompanies even the smallest bit of movement towards my goals, but I can’t think of a time I’ve ever been grateful for talking myself out of doing this work. Small progress, small steps, is still something.

Which brings me to the other big point from my running reflections: it’s crucial you pick a pace that you have the endurance for.

I’d have set myself up for failure, when I started the training plan back in June, if I had expectations that I’d immediately run a sub-seven minute mile or that every run would feel good. That would have actually been 100% delusion. I’m not fast, and I’m okay with that. I have more specific goals now that I’ve rebuilt my running base, but even still my primary goal remains to simply finish every run I go on.

Wherever I’m running for the day (at the trail = flat; dirt roads around my house = some hills) and with whatever mileage I’ve got on my plate, I start out and ask myself, Can I sustain this pace? That’s the question I care most about. There’s no shame in walking or slowing down, but, for me, I want to know my body well enough to move it at a rate that can endure three miles, five miles, whatever the training plan calls for, without feeling like I’m totally burning myself out. Speed and a PR aren’t my concerns. I didn’t even sign myself up for an official, organized 10k race at the end of my training because I don’t want to race. I just want to be able to do.

Now, with my writing, I am aiming to someday be published, but my overarching goal is to spend my whole life in this creative pursuit of telling the stories I have ideas for. For any of us to do that, we have to pace ourselves and understand how to take on that workload in a way we have capacity for. 

I’ve written about this before on the blog, but everyone must figure out for themselves what a realistic writing life looks like. Depending on what you have going on in your life, you may only have Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday to sit down for thirty minutes and work on your projects. You may be like me and have the luxury of more time, so you set a daily word goal. Whatever the case, whatever your routine has to look like, it’s so important you are realistic about it and that you don’t neglect it.

Let’s say you only have two days a week to write, you think that’s insignificant, so you don’t honor them. Well, now guess what? You now spend zero days a week writing. When’s your story getting written?

Let’s say you have a half hour lunch break, you use it to write, and you average a hundred words during that time. By the end of a five-day work week, that’s 500 new words for your manuscript. 

So, all this to say, if you are serious about your writing life—either establishing one, getting back into it, or figuring out how to sustain it—you have to come to terms with these two lessons I’ve gathered from my summer of running. You’re not always going to enjoy the process and sometimes your pleasure doesn’t matter, and you have to determine the realistic conditions you must set for a pace that doesn’t burn you out yet gets stuff done.

The only thing I can guarantee, if you dedicate yourself to these things and commit, is that you’re going to find that the words you write and worlds you explore along the way are going to be worth it.